Live data from Hacker News

Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

adfg.alaska.gov

61–70 of 133 posts

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is very damaging about it? Beyond facilitating A/B/O fan fiction, of course.

That people (usually males) believe this fanfiction also applies to human society and change their behaviours to be perceived as alpha

I don’t think many people would base their behaviour off wolves, parrots, gudgeons, mollusks or whatnot. That’s such a random species to choose.

If anything, I would conjecture that the causality is actually in reverse: the ideas of pecking orders and dominance hierarchies were well-established in the scientific communities among zoologists and social psychologists (and even in common parlance), so people who studied wolves didn’t question external validity of their studies on captive wolves.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#62
I was hiking a summer when there was a 'lemming year'. You saw thousands of tiny carcasses strewn everywhere during that week, you accidently stepped on them as they ran under your hiking boots mid-step, if you sat down off trail they would start running up to you and attack. It was very surreal, they are very cute but also very fierce. Seeing a lemming run up to you and stand up on its hind legs and produce a high pitched shriek to intimidate you is something I'll never forget. Very strange animals.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#63
post #24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you learn quickly in film school that documentaries edit footage however they like to tell a narrative. A lot of the incidents they describe happening in the wild are just multiple different situations clipped together, if you pay attention you'll notice some clips aren't even in the same place. There's even rumors recent footage of panicked animals were actually being caused by film crew drones, not anything h…

I think the "different times" was referring more to the animal cruelty than the choice to stage a scene.

Not so different times:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/animals-...

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#64
post #30

They say its a Myth, but then >"What people see is essentially mass dispersal," said zoologist Gordon Jarrell, an expert in small mammals with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Sometimes it's pretty directional. The classic example is in the Scandinavian mountains, where (lemmings) have been dramatically observed. They will come to a body of water and be temporarily stopped, and eventually they'll build up along t…

That sounds like what wilderbeest do before crossing crocodile-infested waters. It's not suicide, they're just trying to get to other side and have no other options.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#65

congratulations to whomever amongst you who capitalized on this and initially created the Lemmings game for the Amiga

Lemmings was a huge hit on any platform it was released on. I think I played it on the Mac at the time.

And it has so many clones! I played at least 10 when I was younger with different animals or popular characters, same mechanics of having to save them before they die.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#66
post #37

The scene may have been staged, but Wiki's entry on them suggests the demonstrated behavior is completely authentic, instead taking a more semantic argument about the term suicide: --- "Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they are driven to commit mass suicide when they migrate by jumping off cliffs. It is not a deliberate mass suicide, in which animals voluntarily choose to die, b…

Yeah, I was thinking that too. I guess Disney's real offense was picking the wrong subspecies of lemming (one that absolutely doesn't have this behavior) and forcibly dropping them off a cliff because the little creatures wouldn't play along otherwise. Pretty nasty.

[flagged]

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#67
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was thinking that too. I guess Disney's real offense was picking the wrong subspecies of lemming (one that absolutely doesn't have this behavior) and forcibly dropping them off a cliff because the little creatures wouldn't play along otherwise. Pretty nasty.

[flagged]

Are you referring to the original fairy tales that Disney content is based on? Even there, no example comes to mind.

Which stories are you referencing?

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you referring to the original fairy tales that Disney content is based on? Even there, no example comes to mind. Which stories are you referencing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty

> [...] the sleeping beauty, Talia, falls into a deep sleep after getting a splinter of flax in her finger. She is discovered in her castle by a wandering king, who "carrie[s] her to a bed, where he gather[s] the first fruits of love." He abandons her there after the assault and she later gives birth to twins while still unconscious.

Re: Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

#70
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the original fairy tales that Disney content is based on? Even there, no example comes to mind. Which stories are you referencing?

[flagged]

Not true.

A kiss of life is not sexual in nature and its intent is different.

In the Cinderella story it is a kiss motivated by sexual desire (even if it is not worded quite that way for kids). It would be different if the prince knew it would revive her - IIRC he does not.

Assault might be a bit strong, and it does benefit her. However, it is definitely not something that would be normal behaviour in real life. How would you like to be woken by a stranger kissing you? Then again, fairy tails are pretty weird anyway.

Post reply on HN